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Michael Rosenfeld Gallery to Represent William T. Williams

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Michael Rosenfeld Gallery to Represent William T. Williams Michael Rosenfeld Gallery to Represent William T. Williams “One of the things I remember most is ... people asking me … ‘Why are you making abstraction? It’s not African American art.’ And I would always say, “Well … you tell me what it should look like. Jazz is the most abstract of all music. Music is totally abstract. How can you not say there’s a tradition of abstraction?’ I would talk about quilts, point out that the geometry of quilts is certainly coming out of abstraction. There is this rich tradition; all you have to do is see it and to use it.” —William T. Williams Photograph by Nodeth Vang, New York City; © William T. Williams City; © William T. York New Vang, Nodeth by Photograph FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE William T. Williams with Page One (Blue Line Series) in 2010. (New York—November 22, 2016) Michael Rosenfeld Gallery male-dominated art institutions. These critiques came in mul- proudly announces its representation of William T. Williams tiple forms, including an approach to art that favored figural (American, b.1942), whose long career has produced a singular representation embedded in a politics of struggle and an asser- body of abstract work. As longstanding admirers of his work, Mi- tion of identities misrepresented by or excluded from American chael Rosenfeld Gallery is honored to be the first gallery since the culture. Such images were a necessary correction to a history 1970s to represent this important American artist. The gallery is of omission and caricature, but they risked being received by currently planning a solo exhibition of his work to open in March the art establishment in a way that affirmed its tendency to ig- 2017, which will be accompanied by a fully illustrated color cata- nore work by abstract artists who were also African American. logue. In December at Art Basel Miami Beach, his work will be highlighted in the gallery’s presentation of jazz and improvisation Living in an artist loft building on Broadway that over the years in American 20/21 century art; four major paintings and a selec- included neighbors Kenneth Noland, Joel Shapiro, Janet Fish, and tion of works on paper spanning 1974 to 2015 will be on view. William Copley, Williams believed that abstraction offered him greater creative and expressive freedom than figural representa- William T. Williams work ranges in style from his early geometric tion, but he was also wary of the potential cold, impersonal aspect abstractions, to almost-monochromatic explorations of texture, of painting that was merely about painting. Williams thus devel- to an abstraction that derives its force from productive ten- oped an approach that rendered the abstract representational, sion among colors and forms. While he has consistently tested not only through titles replete with autobiographical references, the limits of his earlier styles and developed new approaches, but also in the shapes he incorporates. These shapes resonate his meticulous attention to the process of art making has re- with cultural history and personal memories of a childhood spent mained constant. A master of brushwork and color, Williams in the northern, urban environments of New York as well as the creates his paintings in series, working through a labor-intensive southern landscapes of rural North Carolina. Jazz, too, became an process that often includes drawings, watercolors, and prints. important site of convergence where memory, history, and a black American abstract tradition met. Finally, quilting was for Williams From the outset of his career, Williams’s art was characterized another manifestation of an African American tradition of -ab by bold color and daring compositions that paid homage to and straction. His artwork often incorporates the diamond shape as a challenged the abstraction that had come before it. He emerged visual motif that functioned “as a stabilizing force, a form that in- at a time when abstract expressionism was in decline, while teracts compositionally with what’s around it. But it goes back to pop art, color field painting, and minimalism were on the rise. the quilts of my childhood, the patterns and forms I grew up with.” Concurrent with this aesthetic transition were social and politi- cal transformations that saw artists, intellectuals, and activists The synthesis between personal/cultural narrative and abstrac- challenging the exclusionary practices of New York’s white- and tion that Williams developed early on in his career was met with deserved success. Born in rural North Carolina, Williams moved to New York with his family as a youth. He attended the School of Industrial Art (now the High School of Art and Design), before enrolling at Pratt Institute in 1962. At Pratt, he studied with some of the foremost figurative painters of the day including Richard Lindner, Philip Pearlstein and Alex Katz, but it was painter Rich- ard Bove who encouraged Williams to work from intuition and memory rather than from observation. The resulting abstract work found support amongst his professors whose encourage- ment led Williams to pursue graduate studies at Yale University. The graduate department at Yale provided a rigorous theoreti- cal foundation and studio practice for the artist as the faculty in- cluded George Wardlaw, with whom Williams studied during his first year, Jack Tworkov, Al Held, Lester Johnson, and others. Held played a particularly encouraging and influential role for Williams. “[It was the] best experience I ever had. [Held] was relentless in terms of pushing me….it was really good for me because it forced me to focus on what I wanted to do and why I was doing it.” Williams completed his MFA at Yale in 1968 and in 1969, now liv- ing in New York, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) purchased his Elbert Jackson, L.A.M.F. Part II (1969). That same year, he was included in the Whitney Biennial and he organized X to the Fourth Power at the newly opened Studio Museum in Harlem. A Smoke- house muralist from 1968 to 1970, Williams was instrumental in establishing the artist-in-residence program at The Studio Muse- um, which remains to this day a core mission objective. In 1971, Reese Palley Gallery, New York mounted Williams’s first solo ex- hibition and he began teaching at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York (CUNY), where he was on faculty for four To be on view at Art Basel Miami Beach 2016 at MRG Booth K4: decades, inspiring hundreds of students including Nari Ward and Trane Meets Jug, 1970-71, acrylic on canvas, 108” x 84” / 274.3 x 213.4 cm Arthur Simms. In 1965, he spent a summer in Maine as a student at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, returning as For over forty years, Williams’s work has consistently been shown faculty in 1971, 1974, 1978, and 1979; the latter year he served as at home and abroad. Representation in groundbreaking exhibi- protean Director. In 1975, Bob Blackburn invited Williams to make tions includes, To Conserve a Legacy: American Art from Histori- a print at the Printmaking Workshop; over the next 22 years, Wil- cally Black Colleges and Universities (Addison Gallery of American liams collaborated with Blackburn to produce 19 editions, as well Art, 1999); What is Painting? (MoMA, 2007); Blues for Smoke (Mu- as a number of unique print projects. In 1977, he participated in seum of Contemporary Art, LA) and Witness: Art and Civil Rights in the Second World Festival of Black Art and African Culture, held The Sixties (2014, Brooklyn Museum of Art). Currently, he is fea- in Lagos, Nigeria, which marked his first time in Africa. The trip, tured in the inaugural exhibition at the National Museum of Afri- especially the movements of patterned clothing he saw on the can American History and Culture (Washington, DC) and his work street, had a profound effect on his art, and Williams began a se- will be included in the forthcoming Tate Modern exhibitionSoul of ries of paintings inspired by this African tradition of abstraction. a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power (July 12-October 22, 2017). Williams has continued to revise, adapt, and transform his style, He is represented in over thirty public collections, including and this dynamism, combined with a consistent set of formal the Detroit Institute of the Art (MI); Fogg Museum (Harvard and thematic concerns, has contributed to the longevity of his Art Museums) (Cambridge, MA); The Menil Collection (Hous- luminous career. Williams has been the recipient of numerous ton, TX); Museum of Modern Art (New York City); Nelson A. awards and fellowships, including: a Guggenheim Fellowship Rockefeller Empire State Collection (Albany, NY); North Caro- (1987), The Studio Museum in Harlem Artist’s Award (1992), a lina Museum of Art (Raleigh, NC); The Studio Museum in Har- National Endowment for the Arts Regional Fellowship (1994), lem (New York City); Whitney Museum of American Art (New the Brandywine Workshop’s James Van Der Zee Award for life- York City), and the Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven). time achievement in the arts (2005), the North Carolina Gov- ernors Award for the Fine Arts (2006), and the Alain Locke In- Williams continues to live and work between New York City and ternational Award from the Detroit Institute of Art (2011). The Connecticut. Cumberland County native is also the first African American con- temporary artist to have his work (Batman, 1979) included in the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is located at 100 Eleventh Avenue, widely-used reference work The History of Art by H.W. Janson. New York, NY, 10011. Gallery hours are Tuesday – Saturday, 10:00AM – 6:00PM. For visuals and addi- tional information, please contact Marjorie Van Cura at (212) 247-0082 or [email protected]..
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